


What could've prepared me?

by Owwwwl



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Book 5: The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson), Gen, Poetry, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 22:36:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17109437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owwwwl/pseuds/Owwwwl
Summary: What could've prepared me/ for the blood/ the pain/ the anguished wails/ What could've prepared me/ a sixteen-year-old boy/ for the battlefield?





	What could've prepared me?

War.

What could've prepared me?

What could've prepared me 

for the blood,

the pain,

the anguished wails.

What could've prepared me, 

a sixteen-year-old boy,

for the Battlefield?

 

I've been training myself for this moment

for the last four years.

I couldn't even prepare myself.

You aren't sparring with dulled blades for bragging rights,

to point a sword at the other's neck.

You are fighting to kill.

Because the other wants your head much more than you want theirs.

 

I see people die,

the life leaves them,

They are a pile of flesh.

Nothing remotely human about that.

 

I am spiteful, 

yet full of fleeting hope.

This war was predetermined

I knew I was going to die.

At sixteen.

Sacrificing myself for 

The Cause.

The Cause that will only be acknowledged 

by non-humans

It's suicide, really.

Gods, I'm not prepared for this

 

_I am not the hero_

It echoes hauntingly in my head,

mocking me

taunting me.

Do I want to be the hero?

To save the day?

To be a celebrity down in Elysium?

 

Or do I want to live?

With Annabeth,

Grover.

Clarisse.

Travis and Conner,

and many,

many,

many, more.

  The voice is oddly hard

  I hate myself for it.

 

I want to live,

I decide

 

Hope is restored

I come back with a story to tell,

one that will soon be forgotten.

I come back with red-stained hands

and a mind full of nightmares

The doctors call it PTSD.

 

I am trained to be a warrior

like my ancestors before me.

But yet being a soldier is different, really.

A child soldier even more so.

 

I am sixteen, and four years 

couldn't prepare me.

Nothing can prepare someone for 

the horror called something

as simple as War.

 

War.

It's three letters

One syllable

Yet it means so much more.

 

It doesn't matter that I didn't graduate 

high school yet.

It wouldn't have mattered if instead of graduating

I was starting a family.

Nothing matters.

Nothing prepares you.

Nothing prepared me.

Not even myself.

 

Cause in the end, 

The only thing that prepares someone for War,

Is a sword through their heart

And their neck hanging by a thread.

 

Maybe being unprepared was a good thing.

**Author's Note:**

> I know this sucks, but thank you for reading anyway! Have an amazing day.


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